Brecht and Tragedy

Martin Revermann is Professor in Classics and Theatre Studies at the University of Toronto. His publications include Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (2006), Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin (2008, with P. Wilson), Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages (2010, with I. Gildenhard), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (2014), A Cultural History of Theatre, vol. 1 (Antiquity) (2017) and Semiotics in Action (2019).

Introduction: Radicalism, traditionalism, eristics; Part I. Point of contact 1948: 1. 1948 – A year of krisis; 2. Professing non-Aristotelianism: Brecht's Small Organon for the Theatre (1948); 3. Utilizing Greek tragedy: Brecht's The Antigone of Sophocles (1948); 4. The making of a model: Antigonemodell 1948; Part II. Positionings: 5. The other Other: Brecht's Asia; 6. Naturalism and related diseases; 7. Schiller: rival and inspiration; 8. Comedy and the comic; 9. Shakespeare and the road beyond tragedy; Part III. Comparatist explorations: 10. The tragedy of Mother Courage; 11. Brechtian chorality; 12. Threepenny Opera: the view from below; 13. Appellative anti-tragedy: gods, parody and closure in The Good Person of Sezuan; 14. Mahagonny: rise and fall of a dystopian city; 15. Anti-tragic justice: The Measure; 16. Heroism and its discontents I: the epic tragedy The Judith of Shimoda – expansion, commentary, metapoetics; 17. Heroism and its discontents II: Galileo, a tragic hero of science?; Conclusion: Brecht and tragedy – pulling threads together.